I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature by Philarete Chasles. I read books. _Inter alia_, I went through Dante's "Inferno" in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the author's autograph, which had been presented to the King. I picked it up on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of _Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful rarity. And I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and grisettes. I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination, ending with the _grande ronde infernale_. I made many acquaintances, and if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least generally very singular or notorious. One day I would dine at a place outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all the theatres. Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of _lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not now purchase. When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him _l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous. It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl, with her elder relations or friends. How it happened I do not know, but they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to her. Which "point" was at once seized by the house. The pit, as if moved by one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, "_Il l'embrassera_!" (He will kiss her), to which the gallery replied, "_Il ne l'embrassera pas_."